Tartarin of Tarascon eBook

To say that Tartarin traversed this grisly place without
any emotion would be putting forth falsehood.
On the contrary, he was much affected, and the stout
fellow only went up the obscure lanes, where his corporation
took up all the width, with the utmost precaution,
his eye skinned, and his finger on his revolver trigger,
in the same manner as he went to the clubhouse at
Tarascon. At any moment he expected to have a
whole gang of eunuchs and janissaries drop upon his
back, yet the longing to behold that dark damsel again
gave him a giant’s strength and boldness.

For a full week the undaunted Tartarin never quitted
the high town. Yes; for all that period he might
have been seen cooling his heels before the Turkish
bath-houses, awaiting the hour when the ladies came
forth in troops, shivering and still redolent of soap
and hot water; or squatting at the doorways of mosques,
puffing and melting in trying to get out of his big
boots in order to enter the temples.

Betimes at nightfall, when he was returning heart-broken
at not having discovered anything at either bagnio
or mosque, our man from Tarascon, in passing mansions,
would hear monotonous songs, smothered twanging of
guitars, thumping of tambourines, and feminine laughter-peals,
which would make his heart beat.

“Haply she is there!” he would say to
himself.

Thereupon, granting the street was unpeopled, he would
go up to one of these dwellings, lift the heavy knocker
of the low postern, and timidly rap. The songs
and merriment would instantly cease. There would
be audible behind the wall nothing excepting low, dull
flutterings as in a slumbering aviary.

“Let’s stick to it, old boy,” our
hero would think. “Something will befall
us yet.”

What most often befell him was the contents of the
cold-water jug on the head, or else peel of oranges
and Barbary figs; never anything more serious.

Well might the lions of the Atlas Mountains doze in
peace.

IX.
Prince Gregory of Montenegro.

It was two long weeks that the unfortunate Tartarin
had been seeking his Algerian flame, and most likely
he would have been seeking after her to this day if
the little god kind to lovers had not come to his
help under the shape of a Montenegrin nobleman.

It happened as follows.

Every Saturday night in winter there is a masked ball
at the Grand Theatre of Algiers, just as at the Paris
Opera-House. It is the undying and ever-tasteless
county fancy dress ball —­ very few people
on the floor, several castaways from the Parisian students’
ballrooms or midnight dance-houses, Joans of Arc following
the army, faded characters out of the Java costume-book
of 1840, and half-a-dozen laundress’s underlings
who are aiming to make loftier conquests, but still
preserve a faint perfume of their former life —­
garlic and saffron sauce. The real spectacle is
not there, but in the green-room, transformed for
the nonce into a hall of green cloth or gaming saloon.